Mr. Juanito.... Reading 5

isn't it striking how some moments in our lives are etched forever in our brain for no apparent reason?

one of those moments in my tired existence is a simple class reading of a literary piece...a poem...in our Literature class when i was in fifth grade...

The poem is entitled "Be the Best of whatever you can be"

I remember some lines and have forgotten the others but the essence is embedded inside my pathetic self...

One of the lines is:
"Whether you are a mighty oak or a humble bush, be the best of whatever you can be..."

Life has become very unpredictable for me...if you would ask me 15 years ago if I would become what I am today, I would stare at you incredulously in an act of defiance and ridicule. I would have told you, "I would be an engineer fifteen years from now. I would be successful, progressive, and I would attend Sunday church once a week...." I would be the storybook life with the happy ending, the life that my parents have laid out for me. A cookie-cutter existence...

But life is not a movie script...it is not prewritten...your father cannot be the director of the motion picture of your life...your mother cannot decide the climaxes and plots of your play...

I cannot say I am completely happy nor completely sad about the cards life has dealt me... I know I never was able to fit the mould my mother and father tried to create for me. But they cannot blame me too for veering away from their best-laid plans. After all what power do I have to control the effects of an unhappy childhood, parental misguidance, peer maltreatment and early sexual awakenings among other factors?

If ever there is something I can be proud of it would be that even if I was a pathetic weed in the eyes of society, I can clearly say I am a healthy, highly parasitic and among the fastest-growing of wild grasses. I served out my role well in the plant world, didn't I? Because given those qualities I am among the best of the weeds! If people spit at me because I never became a stately pinetree then so be it. We all have our place in the ecosystem called the world. Not all of us can become giant redwoods. Life is too short to try and grow to become a massive sequoia when all you can ever be is a rootless mushroom....

As my professor in Reading and among the most influential figures in my aptitude for English and Literature said after the reading of the poem, "Find your place in life and flourish in it!" Boy was he right...

I will never forget that poem, that lesson, that discussion, that room, that subject, that professor....